The cemetery was first opened by King’s Norton Rural District Council in 1895, and during the 1930s became the site of Birmingham's first municipal crematorium.

The original cemetery site of 17 acres (69,000 m2) was laid out at a cost of £15,000, which included the construction of offices and two mortuary chapels designed by F. B. Andrews.

[3] As well as having sections for Church of England, Roman Catholic and Nonconformist denomination burials in general, the cemetery also has a specific Quaker section that includes graves of members of both the Lloyd and Cadbury families, together with a number removed from the burial ground of the Friends Meeting House at Bull Street in the city centre in 1966.

Each panel on the screen wall is represented by a number stone plaque set into the grass in the middle of the plot.

There are 125 Commonwealth servicemen and women of the Second World War, most buried in scattered graves within the cemetery except a small plot in section 2E.